The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

Game front cover (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Morrowind turns ten today. For me, Morrowind isn’t just a foundational game in the open-world genre and a defining moment for Bethesda, it’s my favorite Bethesda game of all time.

It’s easy to ascribe to nostalgia, and that’s definitely part of it. But there’s something else too. Yes, the combat is pathetic to broken, the quests outside of the main line are mostly boring, there’s no voice acting and it’s easy to break your game. Oblivion is a great game for its faults, and Skyrim is an incredible game for its faults. But Morrowind has a sense of place that both Skyrim and Oblivion have yet to match.

Cyodril was a pathetic choice of setting – it was all rolling hills and fantasy tropes, it was ruled by boring humans and the whole map had a way of stretching to vanilla. The way that monsters leveled up in relation to the character ensured that everything would feel more or less the same, all the time. And the Oblivion Gate mechanic totally removed the main conflict from the world of Cyodril, removing even that stab at drama from the game world.

Skyrim was better in so many ways. The landscapes were varied, the cities felt more alive, and the characters felt more real. But Nords didn’t represent a great leap forward. Our most tired fantasy cliches are all based off of Germanic mythology in some way, shape, or form, and if things seemed predictable, that’s why. The cities looked different, but they all had their duke, their method of becoming a thane, so on and so forth. The “radiant quests,” far from making the world more engaging, served to remind us how easy it was to copy and paste scenarios into different locales.

But Morrowind had character. You had the empire cautiously plunging into dangerous territory. You had the scheming great houses, the enigmatic Ashlanders and devious, untrustworthy gods. You had variance in architecture and landscape that Skyrim didn’t come close to. The player could join a Vampire clan if they wanted to. The main quest felt bound to the world in a way that Skyrim couldn’t manage – it was about becoming the Nerevarine and the hero of Morrowind, and by the end, you felt connected to each and every city. The fact that quests were so difficult to follow made the game even more engaging -- to figure them out, you had to interact with the game world rather than a menu screen.

Morrowind had a depth and complexity that I haven’t seen in the new settings. If Skyrim were Morrowind, the Forsworn and Falmer wouldn’t just be hostile monsters, they’d be characters to interact with (excluding the Forsworn’s one quest). You wouldn't just buy houses, you'd build them. The inclusion of fast travel in Oblivion in Skyrim is entirely necessary, but the lack of simple teleporting in Morrowind gave the continent a sense of scope that no open world game has matched since.

The depth of gameplay and character development in the Elder Scrolls series has come a long way since Morrowind. The voice acting might have its silly moments, but it has added a level of character that would have been impossible otherwise. The quest writing has a long way to. But for me, Bethesda games are all about the world they make – everything else is in service to that one piece of the puzzle. And I haven’t played in a better sandbox since Morrowind.

If Bethesda can marry the technical achievements of their past few games to the intricate world-crafting of Morrowind, we’ll have a real game on our hands. My vote for the next one would be Hammerfell.